I had to look up the story "Modern Love" as soon as I was done with class, just because the name reminded me of a song called "To a Modern Love" by my favorite band, the long-split-up and long-forgotten Repeat Offender. The story itself even reminded me of the song a little bit, as the song repeats the line "got what I want, but forgot what I wanted" many times, and that's kind of what happens to the narrator of this story. He got what he want--a relationship-- but forgot about everything else that he wanted because he seemed to be willing to do anything, no matter how ridiculous, for this woman. (I also noticed that both the song and the story mention eyes a lot.)
(By the way, I found the story here on the New York Times website.)
As for the concept of Menippean satire, I'm still a bit confused. The only similarity between this story and Satyricon that I could really figure out is that both seemed to be mocking a more general mental attitude of society rather than something more specific like a person. If this is the case, I'm not sure that I'm a fan of this kind of satire (or at least not modern Menippean satire). There are only so many ways that you can poke fun at society before it all just starts to seem repetitive and cliche. I guess that my problem isn't so much with the genre itself as it is with the fact that satire with a fresh, new topic just seems so rare. I've gotten to the point where I just roll my eyes when I see a satire mocking something like pop culture or technology because I've seen it done so many times that it's just gotten old.
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